Gerrit Rietveld

Gerrit Rietveld was born in Utrecht in 1888 and is regarded as one of the Netherlands' most distinguished designers and architects. In the late 1910s, Rietveld left his father's carpentry workshop to set up his own firm. There he created one of his earliest works: Red and Blue Chair.

The chair is a typical example of Neoplasticism and the De Stijl movement, of which Rietveld, along with Theo van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian, was a prominent representative. The De Stijl collective created art, paintings and architecture according to a number of principles, making use of elemental shapes, in particular cubes, verticals and horizontals. They only used straight horizontal and vertical lines and red, yellow and blue as well as black, white and grey.

Rietveld often designed furniture in order to place it in the buildings he had designed. Among his most famous works are the Zig Zag Chair and the 637 Utrecht Armchair, which have become design classics and are produced today by the Italian company Cassina.